(Side note: the magazine incorrectly reported that Penzey’s apolitical sister, a competing spice merchant, reached out to conservative media in an attempt to sell politics-free spices from the same family. I reached out to her first, and posted about it here. She responded later by inviting readers of my blog alienated by her brother’s nastiness to buy apolitical spices at The Spice House — which I’ve done, and which I, as a former Penzeys customer, recommend to you. Especially their Bavarian Seasoning.)

Anyway, here’s the latest from Comrade Penzey:

Plenty of seats still available on the Right Side of History Train. Thing is, this train leaves the station when the polls close Tuesday. Until then, you can still be one of America’s good guys. History has its eyes on all of us. Not comfortable with the president’s latest race-based immigration fears? Then why let history file you in with the white hoods and robes crowd? History remembers. Don’t burden future generations of your family by giving history good reason to remember you as a monster. Until Tuesday there is still time to change.And keep in mind, history doesn’t play fair. You won’t be judged by the understanding of today, you get judged by future understanding. Where we have only some of the information, by the time the history of this time gets told, history will have all the details and more. History will have the Mueller Report in its full, un-redacted sweetness. History will know every step along the way from the president’s campaign’s first contact with the Russian spies right up to him freely quoting the stolen emails on the campaign stage. History will even have his tax returns. How is that even fair?

But as much as history will have all the info, at this point we really aren’t missing that much. Does each and every dot along the way need to be fully penciled in before we admit the obvious line between that first meeting and the knowing use of Russian-hacked documents on the campaign trail? At this point does anyone think he is keeping his tax returns hidden out of a sense of humility? In time, every detail will be documented, but right here, right now, we are already well past the reasonable doubt stage. The Right Side of History Train is blowing its final boarding call whistle. ALL-A-BOARD!!!

And despite the purposefully crafted fears to the otherwise, no hate here. We really are ready to welcome in all late comers with kindness and appreciation. And did I mention we have cookies? (See recipe below). That this train exists at all, much less that it is already rolling under a full head of steam, is something incredibly worth celebrating. Everybody in this country owes a debt to all those who gave so much for these past two years to keep alive the hope that is at the heart of the American Spirit. From the very first full day in office with The Women’s March, to those who will spend Monday knocking on doors to Get Out The Vote, there are so many owed so much thanks.

So one day only, Saturday 11.3.18, we are offering a $28.95 value Hope and Kindness Mini Box that has our Embrace Hope pin, Kind pin, Heal the World Bumper/Refrigerator magnet, and half-cup jar of our really tasty Roasted Garlic all packed into a happy little yellow Penzeys box. These are nice. To get yours in one of our stores, just bring in this email or the coupon above and spend $5.

The dude sells spices, but hey, all hail this Lenin of the Lemon Zest, this Hegel of Dessicated Herbs, busily healing the world by vending aromatic contempt. There’s “no hate here,” says the rich man who says you’re a Klansman if you don’t vote Democratic. Oh, and get some progressive swag by spending five dollars at a Penzeys store. To own the cons. That’ll show ’em!

As a left-leaning moderate, even I find some of Penzey’s post-Trump emails insufferable. But as a customer from many years before Trump, I can’t imagine going back to grocery store cinnamon or not having Arizona Dreaming mix on my breakfast tortilla. The quality of flavor is a notch above anything else I’ve ever had.

This presents an excellent case for the further U.S. expansion of the quintessential Teutonic hard discounters, Aldi and Lidl, with their unmistakable socialist realist store layout and packaging design. Americans weaned on ubiquitous corporate branding with offensively in-your-face politics might find it dreary, but I have always found it sublimely beautiful to still be able to buy a box of 100 brown coffee filters (coffee filters of color) without having my gender identity questioned or my commitment to decolonizing dialectics interrogated.

Soviet socialism: you have money but you can’t buy stuff with it. Contemporary Euro-American capitalism: you have money but almost all of you can buy with it with slyly dehumanize you, especially if you are the sort of person whose existence, as a media trope, does not justify the expansion of the custodial state. I.e. white cis-het males who were raised with the tools for conviviality that allow them to live their lives without imposing on others.

I love how an increasing number of those on the left KNOWS that all of their current actions and political stances will be judged favorably by future generations. No humility in themselves, and no charity towards others. They know with ontological certainty where the arc of history is going and are absolutely certain that they are always on the “right side” of it.

And then they have the have the temerity to call others “religious fundamentalists.”

What Penzey’s needs is a good union organizing drive of his underpaid employees. Just see how “progressive” he would be then. Why, George Pullman had a “progressive” sense of noblesse oblige, as long as he could make a good profit off of it. He was known for hiring only Negroes to work on his sleeping cars… “because they know how to serve.”

I can’t afford Penzey’s… I stock up on McCormick spices at Pick ‘N Save when the new owners sell them off at 99 cents apiece to make room on the shelf for Kroger branded stuff. And I just got a grocery store coupon for $2 off Spice Islands. (I shop at ALDI’s too… socialist realism with a human face, albeit with a capitalist owner.)

On the flip side, if you’re interested in covering absurdity on both sides (and I’m not sure you are), check out this far-right real estate company that markets to gun lovers/preppers/anti-gubmint wackos (but only those with lots of money, of course).

Not being snarky but how many people even read Penzey’s missives? Or any of the messages that seem to be imbedded in ads,catalogues,etc? A few of us maybe but most people can’t be bothered. I’ll read comments to one of your posts or any news article/commentary and the responses indicate a good number of the readers didn’t make it past the title or skimmed it and in so doing missed the gist. Has it always been thus or has online reading changed us?
As for spices,I really like Spice House but Penzey is fine too.

No way I’d buy from this company, but I have to be honest–it’s at least partly because I’m not an enthusiastic enough cook to care about spice blends (except Mrs. Dash Fiesta Lime Seasoning, because it is ambrosia on anything). I mean no disrespect to spice connoisseurs and gourmet home chefs, of course.

But let’s face it: a relatively small (70 stores catalog business estimated at 600,000 annual customers), niche, independent company with a crankypants founder who goes all “Grandpa’s Fwd:fwd:fwd” in his emails to customers is at least kind of charming. His customers can laugh it off, or agree and tell all their friends because nobody in their town in Vermont thinks any differently anyway, or disagree but shrug about it, or disagree and take their business elsewhere, and that’s as it should be. He doesn’t really have the power to influence the culture, and his freedom of speech is important (even if he’s a bit of a jackass in how he chooses to use it).

What is considerably less charming are those huge global multinational corporations who use their considerable power, money, and influence to set themselves up as the arbiters of the common good, no matter how cheesily commercial their efforts often appear (I mean, has any devout Orthodox Jew or Muslim, for example, suddenly embraced the idea of gay “marriage” because of some bank’s goopy Pride ad campaign featuring gay couples and the children they’ve somehow acquired? I doubt it). The message of these efforts is different because it is wielded with so much more power–even the power, insidiously enough, to convince all those who “bravely” agree with them about abortion, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, socialism, open-borders, and so on that *they* are the poor underdogs, barely holding the line of the Right Side of History against the relentless onslaught of those wicked people who want to reinstate the Dark Ages and don’t care how many get killed in the process (which is why you will see hysterical trans-activists screaming that anybody who denies them the “right” to get naked in the changing room of their choice actually wants them dead and has blood on their hands, and other such things).

In other words, when Penzey shrieks wildly about how anybody who doesn’t vote for Democrats is one of History’s Monsters who deserves to be excluded from polite society, it’s pretty much a joke. It’s considerably less funny when Pepsi ™ does it–and they, and companies like them, do it so often and with so much subtlety and money behind them that the question becomes: what do they have to gain from it?

Mere merchants attempt to sell a pseudo-philosophy for one reason: because materialism has become a god, with its own temples, its own worship rituals, its own dogmas, and its own demand for constant ritual sacrifice. The gods of old wanted money and blood, and these strange new gods aren’t any different. You will never see a company embrace a set of values that endangers its bottom line. They sell their version of progressivism with one hand and, truth be told, their version of conservatism on the other, because neither of these “isms” has anything at all to do with the truth. But nobody ever got rich by encouraging their target market to sit around and ponder the eternal verities all the time (with the possible exception of wine-merchants, but they don’t need any extra help anyway).

I really don’t understand why this kind of stuff gets you so bent out of shape. Don’t like their advertising, then don’t buy their product. It’s not like there aren’t a lot of other products out there. Or plenty of smarmy marketing campaigns.

My eyes’ ability to focus first thing in the morning isn’t great at my age. I confess that at first glance I thought that the item in the upper right in the picture was a condom. Somehow that would really have completed the ensemble.

My devout Democrat husband just bought a boatload of Penzey spices. I would prefer Spice House — but dang, Heatherer, you’re right about the cinnamon, it is good! I think I’ll buy some Bavarian seasoning from Spice House to provide some political balance in the kitchen…

I absolutely adore Penzeys spices and when I lived closer to one (Philly), I went there fairly often to take advantage of whatever deal they had at the time. This was mostly during the Obama years, so Bill was comparatively quiet on the politics. But in the run up to Trump and since Trump, it’s been insane. I can’t tolerate the missives from Bill and I find the customer profiles to be obnoxious as well. (They always have a progressive slant and feel agenda-driven and manipulative). To be honest, if bothers me that I feel driven away, but it seems as though he has picked up enough new customers that he’s not concerned about the ones he may be alienating. So, I’m using up my supply and getting some of my spices from Morocco (boyfriend has family there and we go every couple of years) and whatever I can’t get there, I will order from Spice House.

Have Penzeys in my market. Stopped doing business a couple years back when he was ranting. Also switched to Spice House. Recommend Lakeskore Drive for an all-purpose spice for salads, potatoes, vegetables, meats. Bicentennial seasoning has been used as a rub for the Thanksgiving bird.

Ha, I’ve been tempted to write a similar commentary on Mr. Penzey’s histrionic and often genuinely hateful rants to his customers.

It’s a shame, because Penzey’s spices are the absolute best and their retail store in Falls Church, VA is a wonderland to an avid home cook like myself. So I was willing to tolerate a bit of loony (and hypocritical) socialist ranting in emails that I could always just delete.

But some time over the last year – I can’t remember the particular subject at hand – one of his little rants struck me as so absurd and deranged that it finally sunk in that this guy has total contempt for any human being who dares disagree with his screeds. I’m even with him on much of his disdain for Trump, but I’m sure my libertarianism would qualify me for this guy’s gulag too.

It takes a lot to get me to not buy a product I really like just because of politics (I still love my Ben & Jerry’s), but my Penzey’s bottles are mostly getting towards empty and there are no new ones waiting to take their place.

[NFR: The Spice House’s spices are terrific. Same family, same quality, none of the contempt. — RD]

What you people don’t seem to get is that the people you are calling right wing wackos specifically cater to their own kind, intentionally, and their business is completely consistent with their beliefs. Don’t like those, fine, but they are consistent.

Penzey is hawking spice to anyone-you’d think you’d want to just sell spice other than salt…

Also, the right wing guys are saying, “Hey fellow right wingers, want to get away from liberal land? Move out here to Idaho!” They don’t make wild eye cra-cra claims of being on the right side of history and all those who aren’t are in the white hoods and robes crowd.

What you people don’t seem to get is that the people you are calling right wing wackos specifically cater to their own kind, intentionally, and their business is completely consistent with their beliefs. Don’t like those, fine, but they are consistent.

Penzey is hawking spice to anyone-you’d think you’d want to just sell spice other than salt…

Also, the right wing guys are saying, “Hey fellow right wingers, want to get away from liberal land? Move out here to Idaho!” They don’t make wild eye cra-cra claims of being on the right side of history and all those who aren’t are in the white hoods and robes crowd.

I suspect his sister is playing people as well. They have figured out how to sell spices to progressives and those thinking they are pushing back against progressives. Very well played by both.

They may well have hatched this scheme over a family Christmas dinner… wouldn’t that be a good laugh on all of us.

Erin Manning offers a sober reminder that in the larger scheme of the class struggle, this is small potatoes. Thank you Erin, I’m going to stop saying anything and ponder your excellent analysis.

They don’t make wild eye cra-cra claims of being on the right side of history…

Sure they do. Ever read The Turner Diaries? I read a copy loaned to me by a toothless old former Klansman in West Virginia. I don’t take it seriously as a prediction of the future, but it sure does reflect a right-wing version of “The Right Side of History.”

“Sure they do. Ever read The Turner Diaries? I read a copy loaned to me by a toothless old former Klansman in West Virginia. I don’t take it seriously as a prediction of the future, but it sure does reflect a right-wing version of “The Right Side of History.”“

But do the folks referenced? I didn’t see anything to that effect of that the owners of this real estate company had anything to do with Turner Diaries types. Furthermore, the Turner Diaries is more a fantasy, not a claim to be on the “Right Side of History”. Even the nuttiest of those folks I’ve encountered don’t claim to be, they know very well things are likely to not turn out well or to their liking.

Well, the exact phrase “How to Serve Man” was from a science fiction book about an alien contact that seemed benign. But I’m sure you remember that Man-pies were a delicacy served during the Autumn Feast.